"Doesn't matter."
"It matters emotionally."
"We're not doing emotional engineering."
"You really don't enjoy anything, do you?"
Isaac looked at him.
"I fixed Raymond's truck. That was enjoyable."
Adrian laughed despite himself.
Eleanor stayed behind after the others logged off.
"You know this doesn't end with the satellite."
"I know."
"If the historical records show what the metadata suggests, there will be an audit."
"Then audit it."
"They may ask you to testify."
Isaac's expression closed a little.
"We'll see."
Eleanor recognized the boundary and did not push it.
For the next four days, the garage stopped being a symbol and became what Isaac preferred: a workplace.
Adrian slept in a motel on Route 12 and arrived each morning with coffee from the diner. Grace joined remotely from Houston. A materials engineer named Priya joined from Maryland. Eleanor moved between Harlow and Houston, fighting administrative battles Isaac preferred not to hear about.
They built test cases.
They intentionally broke Isaac's model in simulation and made him explain why. They widened uncertainties. They forced worst-case timing offsets. They introduced sensor error, actuator lag, delayed response, and changes in orbital heating assumptions.
The first remediation set failed two edge cases.
The second passed them but introduced a reserve penalty that was still too high.
The third reduced the coupled response enough to matter without shifting the problem into another subsystem.
Then OBSIDIAN-7 changed the schedule.
At 4:12 on the seventh morning after Eleanor first arrived in Harlow, Adrian's secure terminal sounded an alert.
Isaac woke on the office cot where he had slept for less than two hours.
"What?"
Adrian was already at the screen.
"Automatic altitude correction."
"Scheduled?"
"No."
Isaac stood.
Four hours later, the satellite performed a second automatic correction.
Both events consumed significantly more propellant than expected.
The vehicle had begun compensating for the degrading pressure-regulation authority on its own.
Eleanor joined by secure video from Houston.
"Recalculate the margin."
Adrian ran the updated state through the validated models.
The number appeared.
Eleven days.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
The original thirty-one-day window had collapsed to less than half.
Nexora's twenty-five-day package was now irrelevant even if approved immediately.
Isaac stared at the trace.
"We need the third framework through independent verification in seventy-two hours."
Grace's voice came from the speaker.
"That's not enough time for normal certification."
"Then use emergency certification."
"That still requires independent checks."
"Good. Do them faster."
Eleanor did not argue.
The oversight board convened at two the next morning.
Nexora's legal objection remained unresolved in ordinary terms, but ordinary terms no longer matched the operational reality. The government counsel had reviewed Isaac's historical metadata, the consulting agreement, and the current national-security authority. Their recommendation was narrow: suspend pursuit of the proprietary-use objection while the immediate mission risk was being managed and preserve all rights for later review.
Cameron's consulting authority was suspended pending a separate conflict and records assessment.